Seven months after the ceremony at the White House marking the completion
of the human genome sequence, highlights from two draft sequences
and analyses of the data were published in Science and Nature.
Scientists at Celera Genomics and the publicly funded Human Genome
Project independently found that humans have approximately 30,000
genes that carry within them the instructions for making the body's
diverse collection of proteins.

The findings cast new doubt on the old paradigm that one gene makes
one protein. Rather, it appears that one gene can direct the synthesis
of many proteins through mechanisms that include 'alternative splicing.'
"It seems to be a matter of five or six proteins, on average,
from one gene," said Victor A. McKusick of the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, who was a co-author of the Science
paper.

The finding that one gene makes many proteins suggests that biomedical
research in the future will rely heavily on an integration of
genomics and proteomics, the word coined to describe the study
of proteins and their biological interactions. Proteins are markers
of the early onset of disease, and are vital to prognosis and
treatment; most drugs and other therapeutic agents target proteins.
A detailed understanding of proteins and the genes from which
they come is the next frontier.

One of the questions raised by the sequencing of the human genome
is this: Whose genome is it anyway? The answer turns out to be that
it doesn't really matter. As scientists have long suspected, human
beings are all very much alike when it comes to our genes. The paper
in Science reported that the DNA of human beings is 99.9
percent alikea powerful statement about the relatedness of
all humankind.